


mcu ficlets

by IrisParry



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-11
Updated: 2015-01-29
Packaged: 2018-02-08 10:26:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1937391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IrisParry/pseuds/IrisParry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Collection of my short-ish Marvel/MCU tumblr ramblings, together in a handy place. Fluff! Angst! Pining! Post-TWS sitcom ridiculousness! Attempts at writing the Cap 3 script! </p><p>Prompts welcome at my <a href="http://irisparry.com">tumblr</a> (anon is on), but please be aware a) I can make ANYTHING really really depressing and b) sometimes I have a massive crisis and hate everything I write and just hide under my duvet instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Steve/Bucky: pining (sort of)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For prompt ["Steve and Bucky pining for each other: discuss."](http://irisparry.tumblr.com/post/86244971904/steve-and-bucky-pining-for-each-other-discuss) It didn't quite fit this but hell, it's what came out.

Bucky can hardly believe it, but it’s worse now Steve’s _here_. And Steve should not be here, let’s start right there, Steve shouldn’t be leading no charges, shouldn’t be putting himself and that damn shield - a target, he’s carrying around a goddamn bullseye - between Bucky and the bullet with his name on it. Bucky’s a good soldier. Bucky has some kinda particular skills and he gets the nasty jobs done, and that’s what he carries on doing, but late at night, early in the morning, two in the afternoon, whenever he gets the chance to grab a minute to pretend to sleep, Bucky’s a fucking _mess_.

Steve shouldn’t be here, but here he is, so near and so far away and whatever - there’s about ten miles of solid muscle between Bucky that kid from Brooklyn sometimes, but other times it just about knocks Bucky sideways how little he’s changed. Steve never walked like a little guy, never hunched over or tried to be invisible, and now it’s like he just grew into his stupid heart. He’s got the same instinct for self-preservation, the same bravery bordering on death-wish, but Bucky can’t protect him from it anymore. Bucky Barnes had one job, and now he’s screwed it up because Steve is _here_ and people are _shooting_ at him and one day Bucky won’t be fast enough, won’t be alert enough, won’t _be_ enough, won’t -

But here’s the thing, anyway. Bucky is having a pretty shitty war, all told, but he keeps on having it for a reason. He picks himself up and keeps on going, shutting off parts of his mind one at a time when he can’t stop seeing all the - the crap, can’t stop remembering, shutting down so he can keep going, but there was one thing he kept thinking about. About going home, about seeing Steve again, about a whole bunch of stuff that makes him blush to think about because god help him sometimes it isn’t even that dirty, it got to be some real corny schoolgirl crap. And now Steve’s here, and it’s just smacking Bucky right in the face with the fact that the one thing? Never gonna happen.

And it’s worse now, because it’s not even just the man-mountain thing. That’s not the reason. Steve’s here just being Steve, and the comfort of the fantasy slips away because Bucky knows Steve was _always_ way out of his league. So Bucky does what he does now with the shit that hurts, the shit that keeps him awake at night. He shuts it down, he locks it away.

But here’s the other thing, Steve’s a stubborn bastard, and one thing he will never, ever do is stay the fuck down.


	2. Steve/Bucky: letters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For [prompt "stevebucky + letters"](http://irisparry.tumblr.com/post/86714394959/it-will-be-missed-later-in-the-relative-quiet-of)

It will be missed later, in the relative quiet of the camp, in the privacy of the night, when it is looked for time after time. For now, it falls unnoticed, through a tear in fabric or with the rough action of quick, searching hands. It is pale in the dirt before boots and tires cover it, over and over, but if you could look more closely you would see the little wad of paper has not been white for some time.

If you could pick it up, the shape might fit almost neatly into your grip, rounding with the curve of your palm, where other fingers have pressed it into another hand. It was held onto tight, kept close. You might hesitate to open it out: the closer you look the more fragile it is, the edges and the corners of the folds worn soft with handling. You might wonder how it holds together still, but hold it does.

Ink does not wear with the reading, else you might find nothing but the smudges of fingerprints, flecks of rust-brown. What someone else found here might seem a puzzle, because the words themselves are mundane: everyday life, assurances that things remain the same. There is a joke so terrible you may wish you could see their face, the person who kept this and read it over and over, see them cringe or roll their eyes or bark out a laugh, as if the one who put it on paper and sent it to them can see and hear. As if they’re there in the crooked script, the cramped rows that run straight even without ruled lines.

But they’re not there, and this is all someone has of them, and you might feel a sudden urge to put down the letter at that, to fold it where the paper gives and see it curve comfortably in on itself again, to stop reading the words that are not for you. This is precious not for the words themselves but the fact that someone wrote them, and it might break your heart a little to realise that soon someone will stretch their fingers inside a deep pocket and not be able to close them around this. You might wonder what it will mean to them, what ill luck this was talisman against, what cold dread will rise at its loss. You might wonder what he is like, this Steve with the terrible joke and the cough that’s getting better, and how two lives entangled to bring this letter to this place, to make it something to hold on to.

It sinks in the mud, a little solid, quiet thing in the chaos. It will be looked for later, looked for like last night and so many before that, and it will be missed.


	3. Steve/Bucky: reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I don't even know what this is, I just had a lot of feelings that day I guess.

Steve and Bucky, in a tent, the first night they’re together again after the rescue. Bucky stripping Steve down and finding all the ways he’s different - the strength in his arms, the weight of him pressing Bucky down, the shifting muscles of his back beneath Bucky’s hands - and all the ways he’s the same - the moles on his back, the little sensitive places on his neck and his thighs, his careful, deft fingers and soft breathless noises. The way he still looks at Bucky wide-eyed and amazed, the way he calls out desperately when he can’t help squeezing his eyes shut, like he feels so good but he hates not to look at Bucky, even in that moment, especially in that moment.

Bucky’s different too, leaner but stronger, and Steve catalogues new scars with lips and hands, and eyes that are torn between pain at seeing the marks and joy at being here to touch them, to touch Bucky again, and they’ve both changed in that way, Bucky guesses - now they know what it is to miss each other, and to feel a bittersweet sense of mourning on reunion, low and aching under the immediacy of the pleasure.

Steve and Bucky, in a tent, trying to be quiet, trying to be earnest and serious and god help them maybe even a little _romantic_ about learning one another anew, learning themselves, but the laughter comes easily, and Bucky keeps daring Steve to try ridiculously impractical things now he’s a goddamn superman or whatever, and at one point they fall off a cot and Bucky bruises his tailbone and Steve laughs so hard, silent shaking with his (and Bucky’s) hand over his mouth, that for a moment Bucky forgets and gets worried about his asthma.

Bucky kissing Steve to shut him up. Steve shutting the hell up for a long time. Steve and Bucky, in a tent, and they’re neither of them the men they used to be, but they can deal with that tomorrow.


	4. Iris Writes Cap 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A couple of posts stemming from [this](http://irisparry.tumblr.com/post/91184407599/xylodemon-replied-to-your-post-chris-evans-same) discussion about Steve having scruff in Cap 3. It got kind of out of hand, and kind of noir-au. I regret nothing. Originally [here](http://irisparry.tumblr.com/post/91191975169/impertinency-replied-to) and [here](http://irisparry.tumblr.com/post/91198027509/impertinency-replied-to-your-post-impertinency).

_**INT. a shabby half-empty basement bar.** It's one of those shadowed, vaguely sepia-toned places where it could be any time of day or night and you get the sense that the customers couldn't give a damn. [Something maudlin by Jeff Beck](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOEFnJ7JqUU&feature=kp) plays. STEVE sits hunched over the bar alone. _

Slow shot of STEVE raising a glass of neat whiskey to his lips; gratuitous scruff close-up. STEVE'S eyes flutter shut as he drinks and CUT TO:

\- various clippings from Bucky’s file, running through STEVE’S head, the photograph, detailed diagram of part of the arm, blurry CCTV from a Brooklyn convenience store. 

STEVE'S knuckles whiten, tiny fractures spidering out in the empty glass before he puts it down on the bar. He runs his hand across his face and as he covers his eyes and CUT TO:

\- a neat hole in the head of an enemy he didn’t even see coming, to what might be a figure in distant shadows in a strange city, what might be the glint of metal, and that’s the sound of STEVE'S pounding feet slowing and stopping as he gives up a fruitless, desperate pursuit.

STEVE'S teeth dig into his bottom lip, dragging slowly, fist clenching then forced into relaxing and he shoves his stool back, throws a few bills down and leaves. 

We follow him. He’s hunched down into his jacket in the drizzle, more out of habit than anything else; then we stop, hang back, and he leaves us behind. We’re still trained on an alley between the bar and the pawn shop next door, and that might be a figure peeling out of the shadows, it might be the glint of metal in the flickering street light, might be a man turning up his collar with uncovered hands briefly visible out of the pockets of a winter coat, and he might squeeze his eyes shut a second CUT TO:

\- unsteady distance shot of Steve through Sam’s kitchen window, rumpled and unshaven in just sweats, alone, stopping and standing still with the fridge door open but clearly staring at nothing for a long time. 

* * * 

__

__

_**INT. Steve Rogers’ bathroom, night.**_

__

_STEVE leans on the sink with both hands, mirror above obscured by steam from the water in the sink. Shaving gear is set out, brush, cream, straight razor, but he seems at something of a loss, like he’s not sure what to do with this stuff now he’s got it out and set up. He straightens, looking blankly at the clouded mirror for a moment, bead of moisture rolling down his temple, and then there’s a slight shift in his expression, minutest crease between his brows before he’s turning, razor in hand, hips shifting into better fighting balance -_

__

_CLOSE UP of Steve’s grip on the blade faltering, damp fingers twitching once, twice, and it falls and we follow it to the floor._

__

_BUCKY leans lightly against the frame of the bathroom door, hip and shoulder, hands in pockets. He looks well, and it would be startling even if he had been expected to appear just now. He’s clean shaven, and his hair is tucked back behind his ears, clean and neat. He’s in a dark leather jacket and jeans, and he looks at Steve evenly and calmly, though from a shot just over his shoulder we see him subtly draw a sharp breath in through his nose, chest rising, as if to fortify himself before he begins to speak._

__

_STEVE opens his mouth but no sound follows, as if he cannot bear to say that name in disbelief again, as if he fears the response will be the same._

__

BUCKY: You should shave. You look like hell.

STEVE _(laughs, shrill and sudden and stunned to have done so)_ Is - is that a fact?

BUCKY _(pushes off the doorframe and takes a step into the room)_ Nah.

_BUCKY takes his left hand out of his pocket and begins to raise it before he thinks better of it, switches to his right and, slow enough to give STEVE time to stop him but without any hesitation, touches flesh-and-blood fingers gently to STEVE’S beard, soft scratching sound. STEVE doesn’t dare to move, stays stock still, a terrified hope in his eyes. BUCKY’S hand rests against his face and STEVE closes his eyes as if he’s in pain._

BUCKY _(softly)_ : It would look pretty good, if you didn’t look so miserable with it.

STEVE _(reaching his own hand up to BUCKY’S)_ : Bucky -

_They move to draw one another in with their free hands at the same time, STEVE taking almost panicked gulps of air, half-laughing half-choking, and BUCKY’s smile is as wide, little sharp breaths out, and they stand with foreheads together._

BUCKY: Steve, I’m -

STEVE _(opens his eyes)_ : Don’t. Just - please -

_CLOSE-UP shot of STEVE’S hand on the left shoulder of BUCKY’S jacket, where we can see a white star motif beneath his clinging fingers._


	5. Sam/Nat Steve/Bucky: Nutella (GEN I swear it)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For prompt ["Bucky discovers Nutella."](http://irisparry.tumblr.com/post/91389735159/am-i-supposed-to-believe-you-meant-this-completely) Gen. I'm sorry.

Sam digs into the popcorn as soon as Natasha sits back down on the couch with the big bowl, but baulks at the first mouthful.

"Did you make any salty?"

"Nope," Natasha replies sweetly, unmoved by his best wounded expression. "I’m mad at you."

"What?! What did I do?"

Steve and Bucky snicker from the other end of the couch. “That’s still a dumb thing to say to a woman who’s mad at you, right?” Bucky asks cheerfully, and Steve shrugs, furrowing his brow thoughtfully.

"I _think_ so.”

"Try not to drop that popcorn Wilson," Bucky chuckles, "You’re gonna be sleeping here."

"Shut up, man. Tasha, what gives?" Sam turns back to Natasha, who eyes him severely over the top of the bowl balanced on her knees.

"You," she starts, sucking a finger clean and jabbing it at him, "have been seriously remiss in your duties as a host."

It’s kinda nice that she can joke about the living situation that’s evolved in what Sam’s fairly sure used to be his house. Sam’s confident he’s not in any real trouble here, from Natasha’s mock-serious tone and the fact that Steve hasn’t started subtly moving remote controls and other potential weapons out of her reach, like that time they were watching Game Of Thrones and Sam was, he definitely fully accepts now, very very wrong about Melisandre and very very sorry. But that doesn’t mean he’s gonna like wherever this is heading.

He turns up the wounded Bambi-eyes, presses his palm to his chest, _who, me??_ Natasha throws a nasty sweet popcorn kernel at him, dead centre in the forehead, of course. “You’ve been neglecting these two. Left out vital elements of their twenty-first century education.”

"Yeah," Bucky chimes in. "We knew nothing about nothing."

"I thought we were friends, Sam, but you kept this from us." Steve shakes his head sadly, pulls his best _Captain America is disappointed_ face. The bastard.

Resisting the knee-jerk impulse to go do something ridiculously dangerous and heroic in the face of that expression, Sam looks at the two apparently grown-ass men on his sofa properly for the first time that evening. Sweats, enormous bare feet, apparently little concept of personal space, no change there… spoons hanging out of their mouths, hollowed cheeks, wait, what?

"Why do you two have …. jars?"

Bucky flourishes the spoon theatrically, clean and shiny from his mouth. “The question is, why did we not have them before, Sam?”

Steve takes pity on him and turns his jar’s label round.

"Nutella." Sam says blankly.

"Nutella," Bucky sighs rapturously. He digs out a huge spoonful.

"You guys have somehow gotten me in the doghouse over _Nutella_.”

Natasha kicks him, relatively gently. “You got yourself into it. You let these two walk around the world not knowing about Nutella, because apparently you never have it in your house! How did I not notice this about you? I’m re-evaluating a lot of stuff here, Sam, I think you should know.”

"What can I say?" Sam laughs, spreading his hands wide. "I’m not that big a fan."

Steve and Bucky inhale sharply, pulling the jars in against their chests.

"It’s hazelnut and chocolate, Wilson," Bucky hisses. "And you can _spread it_ on a fucking _bagel_.”

Steve puts a hand on Bucky’s shoulder. “I’m sure he didn’t mean it. He’s a good guy.”

Sam lies back across the couch with a hand over his face.

Two hours later, with a break for more popcorn, fresh jars of fucking Nutella and twenty minutes’ solid mocking of the costumes in Watchmen, Steve and Bucky are scraping forlornly at the bottom of the jars, any pretence of being too polite to use their fingers for the last remnants long abandoned. “Why do they make these so little?” Bucky complains.

"Life is cruel," Natasha deadpans. "You know, I think you can order it online. Jars that weigh like, 10 pounds or something."

They’re up and going for the laptop on the kitchen table in seconds, and Natasha laughs as she swings her legs round into Sam’s lap.

"Thought you were mad at me," he smiles, leaning in to her fingers scratching at his scalp.

"I think I’m mad at _me_ now,” she frowns, as triumphant yells filter through from the kitchen. “I’ve created monsters.”


	6. Steve/Bucky - Sam, Nat & Clint discuss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Should we… say something, do you think?"
> 
> "Like what? ‘If you break his heart we’ll kill you?’ I don’t think the Winter Soldier takes our threats very seriously, Sam."
> 
> (None of my WIPs were co-operating and I needed to write something silly. And barbershop quintet is very important to me.)

"Should we… say something, do you think?"

"Like what? ‘If you break his heart we’ll kill you?’ I don’t think the Winter Soldier takes our threats very seriously, Sam."

"I’m not sure these two even know this is a heart thing, though."

"Oh, they’re okay with the heart thing they just haven’t come to terms with it being a - "

"Barton, do not finish that sentence."

"He’s right. A little vulgar, but basically on point."

"Don’t encourage him, Tasha."

"Wilson, Steve  _wrapped Bucky’s hands_  before they got going with this - I want to say boxing but it’s been more like Greek wrestling - “

"Alright, alright - "

" - and Bucky  _let him_ , and they made these  _faces_  - “

"How long have they been at it now?

"Couple hours. If I gotta miss Next Top Model on account of this sexual tension deathmatch, they could at least order us in pizza."

"Okay, that’s not how that hold is supposed to - yeah, we should definitely say something."

"You eating that popcorn or what?"

"Knock yourself out, man. I could talk to Steve tomorrow, we’re trying this new place for breakfast after he’s done literally running rings round me."

"You should take Barnes. You’re better at this stuff than me."

"I don’t know Tasha, I don’t know him so well… "

"Am I not even an option here? Me and Bucky hang sometimes."

“‘Hey dude, wanna grab a beer?’ is kinda different to ‘Hey dude, wanna talk about your sex life?’”

"You and me should grab a beer sometime. I can handle this. Nat, tell him."

"Twenty dollars says he punches you in the face."

“ _Fifty_  says Wilson’s walked in on them making out on his couch by the end of the week.” 

"Do you even  _have_  fifty - “

"Ooh, that was a sweet roundhouse. I think Cap might be breaking a sweat here."

"God, look at them  _grin_  while they kick the crap out of each other.”

"Are we sure we wanna do this? If they’re this gross when they’re totally oblivious…"

"Good point. And your walls aren’t so thick, Sam."

"Feel free to go get some shuteye at your own place, if you can remember the way. Hey, Steve, c’mon, he tapped out, let him up!" 

"Woah - "

"Are they - oh my. Where’s my phone? Pass me my phone!" 

"Way to go Barnes! Get your wallet while you’re at it, Romanoff."

"… I need a vacation."


	7. Steve/Bucky: another reunion

"Did it hurt?" Bucky asks him again, prodding at Steve’s chest, testing the muscle. He looks like he’s ready to drop after hours of debriefing, perched at the edge of the cot next to Steve, Austrian dirt still pitted deep into his skin. His hands are trembling with exhaustion where he runs them over Steve’s arms and shoulders.

Steve lets him touch, proud and awkward and kind of sad all at the same time. Bucky didn’t want him out here, Steve knows, but neither of them could have known it would be like this. Not all of Bucky’s relief now is about their escape, he guesses. It’s strange and bittersweet, Bucky’s hands on him, nothing like he’d ever imagined. But he’d rather have this than nothing. He’d rather be here with Bucky even if it means, perversely, freeing Bucky of him.

_Did it hurt?_ Steve remembers it in flashes, white-hot and insistent and _wrong_ , a hideous discordant note vibrating deep in his bones. Pressure building within every cell, ripping along every nerve, crushing him from the inside out. His body trying to throw it off, to curl in on itself and hide, to escape itself, pathetic floundering against the restraints.

Steve remembers the moment, the bright and clear knowledge of his absolute weakness, the still and sudden certainty that his body was breaking, was a pitiful host that this agony would burn right through.

The screams he was sure were tearing his throat bloody, in the lab and in the nights that followed.

"I’m fine," Steve smiles, though that wasn’t what Bucky asked.


End file.
